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Good Godzone Prep! The Takahe Traverse

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An exploratory adventure in Fiordland with its remoteness, steepness and dense bush holds a definite allure for those of us who enjoy that sort of thing. Since back in 2004, when we bush bashed down the Neale Burn, swimming at times up to our necks in the meandering river to avoid the near impenetrable bush on either side, packrafting seemed like the answer to Fiordland travel to me. So, with this thought in mind (and knowing that in a few months we would be racing Godzone in this exact territory), a group of trampers (myself, Chris, Nick, Dan, Georgia, Patrick) jumped aboard a watertaxi and hooned across North West Fiord in late December with a mission in mind. Our Route Earlier in the day, after frantic packing in Queenstown, we had received our certificate of 'didymo checked' from the DOC office in Te Anau. The water taxi man eyed the certificate suspiciously. He looked at us sternly, clearly unconvinced by our humongous packs, running shoes and light hearte...
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The Infinity Packrafting Loop

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Happy times on the Hollyford The Beginning This adventure came about from dreams of exploring a wild fiordland coast line, several newly acquired packrafts and an amazing looking place called the 'Red Mountain'. All of these places seemed like most excellent places to visit and so after a bit of Internet research about people’s previous experiences and much google earth and topo-map studying we had a plan sketched out that we came to term “The Infinity Loop” based on it’s shape. The Infinity Loop So we had a trip and a group of keen individuals – Matt and La, Georgia, Chris and myself and Tim and Steph who would start with us then cut off a few days early. Post Christmas a weather window opened that was okay, not brilliant, but good enough for us. A solid day of organising and equipment chaos then took place as we tried to whittle our gear down enough to have 8 – 9 days of food, room for packrafts, life jackets, paddles, tents, cookers and so on. Finally w...
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